As the recording density of hard disk drives (HDDs) becomes higher, generally, a thin film magnetic head that can be mounted in the HDD that has a reduced track size, a reduced gap, and increased sensitivity is beneficial. A combination of a recording head and a reproducing head is currently used as the thin film magnetic head. A giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head using a GMR effect was conventionally used as a previous reproducing head. The GMR head is a current-in-plane (CIP) type head in which a sense current is flowed into a sensor film in a direction parallel to a film plane. A tunneling magnetoresistive (TMR) head is used as a current reproducing head, which seems to be advantageous due to increases in output even if a track or gap is reduced, and is mainly used in order to improve recording density. Furthermore, a current perpendicular-to-the-plane (CPP)-GMR head, which is expected to be a next generation head following the TMR head, is now being actively developed. The TMR head and the CPP-GMR head are greatly different from the previous GMR head in that the sense current is flowed perpendicularly to the film plane.
In any type of head having the CPP structure, a sensor film is electrically connected to an upper magnetic-material shield via a nonmagnetic metal layer situated between the sensor film and the upper magnetic-material shield, as shown in Jap. Pat. Office (JPO) Pub. No. JP-A-2008-97700 or JPO Pub. No. JP-A-2003-204096. For example, Ta may be used for the nonmagnetic metal layer.